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A judge’s live bullet & the
atomic bomb
AS a young student of world history, I wondered why the atomic
bomb was dropped in Japan and not in Germany. It was a question
that even my teacher failed to answer satisfactorily. Until I came
across a book by Clark Clifford, a memoir of his forty-five years
as adviser at the Oval Office in the White House – from Presidents
Harry Truman to John F. Kennedy and Jimmy Carter.
The book, which I consider a very precious one, deals with the
most critical periods where the presidents of the most powerful
country in the world agonized over making decisions that had
irreversible repercussion on mankind. Images of people and
incidents, told on a first person account, flash by as the author
tells about Harry Truman traveling with Britain’s Winston
Churchill on the train to Missouri for the “Iron Curtain” speech
that henceforth isolated Russia from the rest of the free world;
and of Lyndon Johnson searching in vain for escape from the
immeasurable cost and folly of the Vietnam war.
As a student of “Dekada 70” during which time strong anti-American
sentiment was raging in campuses throughout the archipelago, I was
intrigued by speculation that the use of the bomb against Japan
instead of Germany was related to racial factors. The bomb, the
most terrible weapon in the world at that time, was never intended
for use against Europeans but reserved exclusively for Asians. Not
true, says Clifford.
He explains that the men who built the bomb, including J. Robert
Oppenheimer, had hoped to finish it in time for use against
Germany. But the bomb project had not yet been completed even when
the war in Europe as of April 1945 was already in its final days.
Clifford claims that had the bomb been finished in time to shorten
the European war, President Truman or President Roosevelt (whom
Truman succeeded in the last days of the war) would have used the
“most terrible weapon” against Hitler’s Germany.
It was also debated why America did not order a demonstration bomb
dropped on an unpopulated area before using one in a populated
area such as Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
President Truman did not consider such idea for several reasons.
First, his scientists and military advisers, with only one test
behind them, were not absolutely certain that the next bomb would
perform properly, and they did not want to risk a publicized dud.
Second, the Americans felt Japan would not appreciate the bomb’s
full destructive might unless it was used against an actual
target. There was also the assumption that the Japanese, deeply
committed to their Emperor and defending their own soil, would
fight even more tenaciously than Germany which at that time was
already on the verge of capitulation. President Truman wanted
nothing more than to end the Pacific war quickly and the choice
was clearly divided between sacrificing lives of large number of
Americans and using a weapon that could dramatically shorten the
war.
Thus, the American president ordered the dropping of the bomb if
the Japanese did not surrender by August 3, 1945. The Allies by
then had issued a declaration promising that Japan would neither
be destroyed nor enslaved if it surrendered; if it did not,
however, Japan would meet “utter destruction.”
On August 6 of that same year, the US plane, Enola Gay, dropped
the atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima. Two days later, on
August 8, a second atomic bomb was dropped, this time on Nagasaki.
Too many Japanese lives were charred to death while others who
survived near the epicenter succumbed years later due to toxic
fallout and radiation.
* * *
The joke is going the rounds of law offices and halls of justices
that the much ballyhooed live bullets delivered free to the homes
of both Judge Felimon Montenegro and landowner Danilo Mariano by
unidentified couriers during the holidays was kind of an “exchange
gift” between the two. The naughty joke was meant to say that the
duo were blaming each other for the “bombs” that have been
exploding since exposes came into the open about alleged bribery
and corruption of court personnel and the damaging confession by
witness-driver Ricardo Mejorado. Further, investigators could not
help from deducing that it was stupid for a judge to open by
himself the contents of a suspicious-looking package thrown in his
front yard just so he could enter it into the police blotter and
tell the world that his life is in grave danger. Earlier, at other
end of the line, at the Tinangis penal farm, Mejorado had told
everyone that if something bad happened to him, Montenegro and
Mariano should be held for the crime.
* * *
With jueteng, the illegal numbers game, marching on in wild
abandon, the ordinary citizen and comebacking politicos should
feel assured that there will be elections in 2007. Malacañang
desperately needs the money to bankroll the poll campaign of and
massive cheating by its lapdogs and allies. More dirty moolah are
needed to line the pockets of loyal police and military officers
and the begging arms of so-called ward leaders and corrupt
mediamen. So, what else is new?
